The Savage Dystopia of Vapid Conversation

Tying together previously unconnected observations and finding a common basis for post-Covid dementia, social media inanity, and so-called "cancel culture"....

Spotted today on the Book of Faces:

A real conversation starter!

This sort of thing preceded social media. A theme is raised, and people take turns "sharing" stories more or less relating to that theme. Humans love doing this because it invites us to freely unload the contents of our brain without requiring thought or consideration. "'Cookies,' you say? Well, let me tell you about the time my cousin Wayne ate so many that he vomited!"

We don't care about Wayne, even a little bit. But we dare not stop them while they're unloading. This is as close to a "performance" as non-creative people ever get. It's their time to shine. Hush now, and try to laugh supportively.

Our minds are fringy hairballs of half-baked thoughts and memories. So it's cognitively soothing to extract something nominally relevant from that hopeless clutter. Like a hoarder who's been asked for a green sponge, the glee is high.

You can't get people to help, or to show up, or even to do, like, anything, really. This is the sole remaining way in which contemporary human beings can dependably be persuaded to contribute. It's come down to this:

I think it was George Carlin who did a bit about the desperate talk radio host coaxing listeners to call in by inviting opinions about nun-strangling. So, yeah, the gambit of conversation-starting has been around for a while. In fact, it paid for the apartment in which I currently type.

But it's now all there is. Mindless "sharing" is no longer something we mostly do while roasting marshmallows around glowing campfires. Social media invites us to chime in randomly, uninterestingly, unhelpfully, inanely, 24/7. And we're so used to this that hardly anyone can respond directly and substantitively to another person's statement even in the course of everyday conversation. At very best, people may lightly scan your speech or writing for a keyword triggering them to "share" broadly on that general theme. "'Cookies,' you say?"

Paying attention to another person is hard. And forming a salient response requires way more effort than anyone is interested in applying. People aren't worth all that. So, per the way of things, the muscle atrophies. Many are so dulled (by comfort, complacency, and quarantine) that they couldn't listen closely or respond relevantly even if they wanted to. It's strictly hypothetical, though, because who'd want to?

Nearly everyone in the rich world, especially post-lockdown, is roaringly narcissistic. But I've been wrong to pin this stuff entirely on narcissism.A few weeks ago, I offered this example of the problem:

If someone is explaining astronomy to you and gets stuck remembering a term, and you fill in “gravitational lensing”, there is 0% probability they will stop their spiel, look freshly at you, and declare “Oh! You know astronomy!”

Pre-Covid, it was more like 60%.

They will continue their explanation - their performance - without hesitation. You have nothing to do with it. It’s like you’re not even there. This is the framing: My thoughtstream is paramount. My assumptions are sacrosanct. Actual evidence is inconsequential; flimsy and unreal.

To be sure, that's not non-narcissistic! You can't view other people as full-fledged beings while using their faces as targets for splattering your pent-up mental contents. My frequent observation - that we’re all far too narcissistic to recognize how extremely narcissistic everyone is - applies. Our obliviousness to the clear truth that no one ever actually talks to us stems from 1. our delusion of centrality ("everyone is always paying attention to me!"), plus the hilarious fact that 2. we're paying as little attention as they are. We have mental contents of our own to unload, which we're busily preparing while they babble. 'Cookies,' you say?

But it's not all narcissism. It’s also the viral practice of chiming in on a loose theme rather than responding to whatever was just said. "Sharing", not conversing (“sharing” has become an Orwellian term for “broadcasting,” just as “humbled” is now how we flaunt). This is not to claim human discussion was ever super on-point. But it used to be, sometimes. Now it's never. It's too much damned work to pay attention, much less respond relevantly. We've decided that people just aren't worth it. And we're too self-absorbed to notice that any of this is happening.

So that's unpleasant. But there's more. The same phenomenon sows chaos...and worse. Let's alter that meme a little:

I can assure you, having run a huge online forum, that this won't be a discussion about music. It will be a discussion about a whole other topic.

"I'm offended!" is just another way to rotely grab hold of a keyword and unload mental clutter. Another tape to pop in. The person urging others to chime in doesn't get to restrain what, exactly, gets unloaded (you cannot imagine the grief Chowhound's moderators took while trying to curtail discussion of motorboat repair, bowling, and global politics in a food forum). Unloaders do not appreciate being thwarted in mid-spurt.

It's entirely predictable that people point their hoses at the inviter as zestfully as the invitation. Rather than vapidly sharing on the theme, they’ll vapidly share about the choice of keyword. Our hoses are stupendously agnostic. They just spray and spray and spray!

So if I were foolish enough to type out the word "nigger", hardly anyone would take context into account. Nary an iota of consideration would be paid to who I am, where I'm coming from, what I meant, or how I've lived my life. Such factors are utterly irrelevant. Rather, a keyword compels an unconstrained outflow of mental contents - in this case maybe not such nice contents - because that's what words are for now. And, of course, whoever typed that word is a racist racist who must crawl up and die. Because that's the take.